From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishcontraptioncon‧trap‧tion /kənˈtræpʃən/ noun [countable] MACHINEa piece of equipment or machinery that looks funny, strange, and unlikely to work well a bizarre contraption
Examples from the Corpus
contraption• It's a contraption for washing windows on tall buildings.• The lave net was a simple but very effective contraption for catching salmon.• Early cameras were large and expensive contraptions.• Above all, why were these chaps messing around with helium-filled contraptions, in an age of routine rocketry?• By demonstrating his floating contraption - part surfboard, part kayak and part sailboard - Halfon hopes to create a tide of attention.• Show him you are sensitive to his needs with a gift certificate to that utopia of contraptions, Sharper Image.• He must negotiate puzzles, spring boards, buttons and other contraptions laying in his path.• No one place in the contraption governs walking.• Seven of us squeezed into this contraption, which wheezed along at about ten miles an hour, coughing blue fumes.• The steam engine is an unthinkable contraption without the domesticating loop of the revolving governor.Origin contraption (1800-1900) Perhaps from contrivance + trap + invention 